Gop Debate

Rejecting Newt Gingrich's charge that  Mitt Romney is anti-immigrant, the former Massachusetts governor responded with an accusation of his own, saying Wednesday that his main rival is pandering to Latino voters in next week's Florida presidential primary. But Romney, during a quick visit to Miami, did a little bit of special-interest catering of his own. He told a Cuban American audience that he would appoint a czar to promote freedom in Cuba and throughout Latin America if he is elected president.

In a potentially pivotal GOP presidential debate, Newt Gingrich repeatedly found himself on the defensive Monday night, as Mitt Romney sharply assailed his record as House speaker and his work as a highly paid consultant to Freddie Mac, the federally backed mortgage giant. The gloves came off at the start, with Romney, reeling from a double-digit loss to Gingrich two days earlier in South Carolina, saying he had learned from that defeat not "to sit back and get attacked, day-in and day-out, without returning fire.

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich immediately locked horns over questions of electability as the Republican presidential candidates gathered in Florida for another debate tonight, one week before the latest test in the 2012 nominating race. Gingrich, the victor in South Carolina's Republican primary last weekend, gladly responded to the concerns of his party's establishment that he would be a risky choice to face President Obama in the fall, saying the change needed in this country "requires someone who's prepared to be controversial.

It took NBC debate moderator Brian Williams about 15 minutes to turn to Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, and when he did, he hinted at the question on the minds of most observers of the Republican presidential race: When will Paul drop out? “To say that there has only been three races and talk about not being electable, I think is a bit of a stretch,” Paul said. Paul finished in third place in the Iowa caucuses and second in the New Hampshire primary. But he placed last in South Carolina last weekend among a narrowed field of four candidates.

With all the interest in the analysis of social sentiment - feelings expressed in the ever-expanding public arena online - how much can we really know about what people are feeling? Especially if the work is being done by computer algorithm, rather than human interpretation? As more news outlets incorporate sentiment analysis into coverage of politics, its accuracy and usefulness has been met with skepticism from some who study linguistics and social media. In other cases, the criticism has been more biting.

A roundup of entertainment headlines for Friday: William Shatner is ending his time as Priceline spokesperson with a commercial that features the character's fiery death. ( Los Angeles Times ) "Star Wars: The Old Republic" may be the biggest entertainment production in history. ( Los Angeles Times ) Great news, kids! Geraldo is coming to the radio! ( Los Angeles Times ) How popular are Super Bowl ads? The ads are now getting teaser trailers. ( Los Angeles Times )

With time ebbing to catch front-runner Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidates brawled Thursday night in a debate that drew angry denunciations of the media from Newt Gingrich and spurred heated disagreements between Gingrich and fellow challenger Rick Santorum. The nearly two-hour face-off, held two days before Saturday's primary, opened with a tense confrontation between Gingrich and CNN moderator John King. It began after King asked Gingrich whether he wanted to respond to an allegation by his second wife, aired on ABC News on Thursday, that he sought an "open marriage" while carrying on an affair with a congressional aide who is now his spouse.

It took only a matter of minutes for the explosive allegations by Newt Gingrich's ex-wife that he once asked for an “open marriage” that would include his mistress to emerge front and center at Thursday evening's Republican debate in South Carolina. Immediately after the candidates introduced themselves, Gingrich was asked about claims his second wife, Marianne, made to ABC News and the Washington Post this week that the former House speaker in 1999, allegedly in the midst of an affair with now-current wife Callista, had asked her to engage in a permissive three-way arrangement.

After arguing in Monday night's GOP debate that he would like to see super PACs “disappear,” Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney defended the fact that he has raised money for the independent committee supporting his campaign - stating that he was simply operating within the bounds of current law and doing what was necessary to compete in the presidential race. “It's not that I don't support super PACs,” Romney told reporters Tuesday when asked how he squared appearing at fundraisers for the committee, Restore Our Future, with his distaste for the outsized role that the groups have played in the 2012 cycle.